[sugar] Question about clipboard service

[Greg Smith]

Hi Eben,

I'm resurrecting an old thread here.

BTW if you have any more specs or design proposals to share, now is a 
good time to consider them for 9.1-sugar .84 so send them out.

I see where you are going with this work flow for kids writing on their 
own then coming together. It could work but it feels like we are forcing 
the kids to adapt to the technology rather than having the technology 
adapt to the way kids learn.

Having the two instances of the activity open and moving back and forth 
between them seems especially inelegant.

That said, I don't have a better idea readily available :-(. I think we 
should go back to fundamentals and think this through one more time.

How do kids collaborate on projects with pencil and paper? Is anyone on 
the list a teacher? I'll run it by my own kids but I think we need to 
watch this process in action to get a better feel for it.

I can't remember any times when my kids wrote something at home then 
brought it in to class then combined it in to a project. They usually do 
some research, come up with ideas then write it together in person.

I believe that when kids get together in a group, one kid takes the lead 
and does most of the writig while others shout out ideas and make 
suggestions.

We don't have to imitate how its done now, but maybe watching kids 
interact will help inform the design. One thing you hear a lot is that 
kids teach each other how to use the XO better than teachers teach them. 
What does that look like in detail? One kid leans over and types on 
another kids keyboard or she tells the other kid what to do?

May be the right design is to have each kid open write (or a web page?) 
and then they click a button and everything on their screen is copied in 
to the shared version which they now also see. Sort of a fast start 
option. Then kids edit that down to a final product. A dump everything 
in then prune it down approach. That's my working methodology (see 9.1 
page :-) but my brain is way different than a kids...

Time to crack open the Piaget again. Maybe this one will inspire some 
new design ideas: 
http://www.amazon.com/Childs-Conception-Space-Jean-Piaget/dp/0393004082/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220645614&sr=8-1

Minsky, Papert or other references welcome too.

I believe there have been some "blackboard" or shared space ideas kicked 
around in the past. Does anyone have a link to those?

I know its a fuzzy question but I wanted to throw it out so we think 
about it from the ground up while we still have time. For now, we stick 
with your design until someone comes up something better...

Have a great weekend,

Greg S

 >
 >>> Can you walk me through the steps needed for that? e.g. one kid 
starts an
 >>> activity then shares it, each other kid opens the activity and 
joins (or
 >>> opens their own work?), then ???. How do they get their own work on the
 >>> clipboard and how do they add it to the shared activity?
 >>
 >> Step by step. I limit the example to 2 kids for simplicity; the method
 >> scales naturally.
 >>
 >> 1. Kid A starts an activity
 >> 2. Kid A shares the activity
 >> 3. Kid B joins the activity
 >> 4. Kids A and B collaborate (synchronously) in the activity
 >> 5. Kids A and B go home
 >> 6. Either kid A, kid B, or both work in the activity (asynchronously)
 >> 7. Kids A and B come back to school
 >> 8. Kid A opens his version of the activity*
 >> 9. Kid B joins A's version of the activity
 >> 10. Kid B opens his own version of the activity**
 >> 11. Kid B copies part of his own version to the clipboard
 >> 12. Kid B pastes that clipping into A's version of the activity
 >